Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Yes, I'm late as hell on the bandwagon, but I finished The Tudors S1, and as agonizingly historically inaccurate as it was (the Duchess of Suffolk/Dowager Queen of France does NOT die before Wolsey does [and her name is NOT Margaret, her name was Mary -- King Henry VIII had TWO sisters, Mary and Margaret], and Wolsey certainly didn't kill himself....), it was very very very good.

But since I'm still tethered to the five foot cord, I need some entertainment, so I started Heroes S1. My points of quibble:

-Niki is supremely annoying. Also her magic car and the magical dead bodies in the truck is kind of a nice deus ex machina. -Peter Petrelli needs to stop being so damned emo.-People need to be nicer to telepath Greg Grunberg*-I heart Hiro so much.-Dude, they froze the guy and took his brain.

And why is everyone on this show (save Hiro, who is the most cheerful person EVER) so gorramed DEPRESSED?

Also, while watching Mohinder listen to the tapes and that chick, I forget her name, find the lizard, I totally said this to Kristen (who suffers me talking my way through most TV shows that I watch behind her): "We named the lizard Mohinder." (Ok, it was lame, but it made me chuckle)

Monday, January 26, 2009

I can't get it to work, so I've given up for now. I'm on a five foot tether to the modem with this bitch and it's incredibly frustrating. Ahh well, maybe now I will be able to watch some TV shows while I internet?

in other news, I lost my debit card yesterday. So I spent THIRTY FIVE MINUTES, most of that on hold, to get myself a new debit card. Thank goodness that I actually LIKE my bank, or else their phone services would convince me to switch to another bank asap. "Do you want to continue holding, or can you just call back in an hour or so?" OH FUCK NO NOT HOLDING.

I also have to dispute my phone with AT&T. See, I have a prepaid phone, and every $100 you put on it they give you free $$ for it. I got a text msg on the 5th of Jan saying that if I put just $25 more on my phone I'd get $20 for free. So Friday, I put $25 on the phone.

Guess what? They gave me $10. And I got a text msg today stating, "hey congrats, we gave you $10." NOT. ON. You fuckers owe me that other $10, or else I WILL be switching to a new prepaid service. And since Verizon's out (fuckers don't like to listen when you change your plan), I am down to TMobile, Tracphone, or something else, I'm sure.

Friday, January 23, 2009

You know what? It's nice to finally have an Upstate Senator from New York.

As a lifelong resident of Northern New York, I have seen my region of the state virtually ignored in favour of New York (City), with occasional lip service paid to the soldiers up to Fort Drum, as well as to Syracuse and Buffalo.

Most political ads I heard when growing up stated, "We need real change in Albany." Albany to me was a far away concept. It takes me three hours to get home from Albany every time I go back up north. Sometimes it feels like Northern New York can be in its own little world.

I think that's the reason a lot of people up north voted for Secretary Clinton in 2000. She actually came up and visited us. It's rare for politicians to go up that far. Like I said, Syracuse is basically the cut off point.

But you know what, the thing about the senators that bothers me most is simply this: we haven't had an upstate senator since 1971. That's how long all of our Senators have been from the City or its suburbs. I'm even looking at you, Secretary Clinton. I get it. New York City is a happening place and a lot of our state's residents live there. But there are still a lot of us who don't live in the city, who do not have our interests strongly represented in the Senate.

I'm also very tired of the Senate seat being the plaything of the political families of this country. We had the Clintons, Kennedys, and Cuomos all jockeying for Senate seats. And remember Rudy Giuliani? He had his eye on that seat. So to me, it's quite refreshing to see that our new Senator is someone from upstate. I am very, very excited that Senator Kirsten Gillibrand will be representing New York.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

While I was waiting on the bus, the lady sitting next to me got into a conversation with the French Canadian couple sitting behind her. I'd switched seats with them so they could sit together, since they got on when the bus was full. And since I did that for them, they helped me put my seat back a bit because there were like 3 rows of seats folded right behind mine for the wheelchair space.

Anyway, this woman is chattering along with them, and she asks them the following: "What do you guys speak?"

The dude replied, "French and English."

She looks at him and says in all seriousness, "Oh. I thought you spoke Canadaese. So you guys speak English up there too?"

And the guy humoured her and explained that French and English were both official languages of Canada.

In other news, once again we have a left-handed president. I was reading earlier about how there has been a significantly large number of lefthanded Presidents since World War II. Now most of this is because before that, being left-handed was strongly discouraged. I have vivid memories of going to Upper Canada Village when I was in Elementary school, and getting thwacked on the hand for trying to use my left hand when we visited the one room schoolhouse. So yeah, it's kind of fascinating to see left handedness so prominent. At my current workplace, I actually think lefties nearly outnumber righties. It's really funny.

In other other news, I spent ten minutes tonight at the bar discussing colloidal silver and how it turns people blue. This came from a discussion on the Appalachian mountains, and I brought up the blue people in the Appalachians. Yes. I am a giant nerd.

Monday, January 19, 2009

Right, so Sunday Jan. 19 I had the day off, and my cousins were in New York escaping DC for the weekend. So we made plans to meet up, and hang out for the day. I took Greyhound because it only cost me $36 round trip to the city and back, and the train was like 150. Fuck that no.

My bus was fifteen minutes late, but we got there on time, which is always cool. I headed over to Times Square, and misjudged the blocks, and ended up two blocks away from the TKTS place for the Broadway shows. But I found my cousins, and they'd gotten us tickets to Mamma Mia, which I had heard about and nothing bad, so I said ok! Also, Julie loves it, so I knew that was a good endorsement. She wasn't wrong.

I got to sit in a BOX! It was partial view, so the left half of the musical was not visible to me, but it was still cool and enjoyable! I had curtains and everything! It was awesome. Also, the play's the thing...

So after that we hung out in a restaurant til I went to meet up with Kristen, because my cousins were going to Peekskill for the evening. So I again misjudged blocks and ended up on the opposite end of the street from Kristen, which led to hilarity. Jesus, Macy's is HUGE. (Yes, I'm an upstater. We have small stores. Ok, keep this in mind -- I didn't go to a two storey mall til I was 17. Yeah. Didn't see a Macy's til I MOVED TO ALBANY. NO Seriously. Sheltered.)

Anyway, Kristen took me to this really cool place that I forgot the name of, and we enjoyed dinner. Then we took a cab up to 30 Rockefeller Center, to try to go up to Top of the Rock, and it turns out that because it was snowing you couldn't see shit. So we didn't go up. Instead, we walked around a lot, and I got to see St. Patrick's Cathedral, which appeared out of NOWHERE, and that was neat. I also took a picture of the Chrysler building, because, well I'm a tourist in NY. Shut up.

Ok, so I had to be back for work today at 10 am. So I booked my return trip to leave at 9, and arrive at 12:15am. No sweat, right?

OH WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG.

So Kristen and I queue up for the bus, as she was keeping me company til I got on the bus. We talked to a nice Canadian gentleman in front of us about various awesome things about Canada. All the while we waited for the bus. 9:30 rolls around and they started loading. They told us that anyone going to Albany and this random stop in New Jersey got priority boarding, so I stepped up and hopped on the bus. Yay, right?

Turns out the reason we didn't start boarding til 9:30 was because the first bus BROKE. That sucks, right? So they got another one. They filled it up, and so we waited to take off. Um, but wait, what's this? A broken windshield wiper, while it's snowing? Alright, well now we have an unscheduled stop to the garage to see if they can fix it.

Guess what? They can't. So we turn around and go BACK to Port Authority. They're like, "We don't really know what's going to happen now." So we're SOL cause it's 10:30 at this point. Turns out that they can't get another bus because they need an ADA bus for this one passenger who uses a wheelchair. Apparently they are all in DC for the inauguration. Which smacks of wtf to me.

So we see our bus driver get into a SCREAMING match outside with a few other people, and I guess the news wasn't good, because he comes back on and apologizes again. He was cool. He tried very hard to take care of us.

Well there's a bus that leaves at 11. A lot of the people who didn't get on at 9 were waiting for that one. And it turns out they ARE sending another bus, but they refund the girl who needed the wheelchair one, because she can't ride it. Ok, fair enough. So we wait and we wait, and suddenly I notice that it's 11:30. We should have been almost to Albany at this point.

Then they fucking fill up the other bus for the 11pm people. Meanwhile, we're still sitting here and have no idea when we'll be going, or when the fuck our replacement bus will even get here. It's getting ridiculous. So finally it comes, and we load up. But the other bus leaves. It left BEFORE WE DID, and we were supposed to leave at NINE. Oh and guess what, our replacement bus? HAS A WHEELCHAIR SPACE. SO they lied to that girl when they told her they didn't have another one. But she got on it anyway, so it worked out ok for her. So we left at 12:15.

That was the TIME we were supposed to GET IN TO ALBANY GODDAMMIT. We didn't get there til 3:15. And the worst part? When we got to Albany, all these people who had been sleeping were forced to GET OFF THE BUS so they could clean it and refuel it. Clean it? What the hell?

That was such complete and utter bullshit. If I didn't have to work at 10 today I probably would have tried to find a cheap room and stayed over night.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Of course New York one ups the rest of the state. Anything we can do, they can do better, it appears.

So today, I was reading along on my google news feed when I encountered this story: Emergency Landing at Albany International Airport. Apparently an Air Canada jet had some problems landing, since all four tires went. Now I'm no expert, but that sounds not good.

Of course New York City had to go one better: not only did they have a plane emergency, they had to LAND IT IN THE RIVER. See all the pictures.

Luckily no one was killed in either crash. I just found the contrast interesting.

(I'm such an upstate snob.)

And yet despite my self-proclaimed dislike for the downstate part of my, well, state...I'll be in NYC on Sunday.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

For those of you who don't know, I work at a clothing store. It closes at six on Sundays, and I can count on one hand the number of times that we have actually closed AT six. That would be 0.

So this woman comes into the store at 5 on Sunday. We close at 6, and there are lots of people milling about. 5:55, we ask her if she needs help. We're closing up and we have people coming in to reset the floor. She declines our offer.

So we're finishing up cleaning up the store a bit, and I ask her again if she needs any help. Note, from at least 5:50, she has been standing in front of a display of about 10 5.99 handbags.Also note that I am not the only person to ask her and her friend if they need help.

Finally, the manager asks her if there is anything she can help her find, since she needs to close the registers and get out of the way of the floor crew. It's 6:15. The woman huffs, "I feel so rushed! YOU CAN'T RUSH FASHION!" And she flounces out of the store, complaining that we rushed her.

Now this might be terrible of us, but for the next ten minutes as we closed, someone would randomly yell out, "YOU CAN'T RUSH FASHION," and crack us up. Of course the woman was wearing stirrup pants. "1985 called, it wants its pants back." Seriously, it should not take you twenty goddamned minutes at least to decide if you want any of ten 5.99 handbags. Either it jumps out at you or it doesn't. GTFO.

Friday, January 09, 2009

I had lunch, a typical lunch for me -- roast beef sandwich and Curly fries from Arby's, and a Dr Pepper, and after I finished eating, my lip swelled up.

SWELLED up huge. Like I had a bad collagen implant. I freaked out, because it had never happened to me before. Our store mom said to me that it was an allergy, and the other manager offered to go get me benadryl to make it stop cause it got bigger. It eventually stopped and started to get smaller, but you can still kind of see it. Looks like my lips are chapped, and that's really annoying.

What's even more annoying is that I don't know what caused it -- our speculation is that the restaurant changed the oil they use, and that's what's bothering me. But I wouldn't know what kind of oil it was, I guess I could go ask. In the meantime I need to go get benadryl, or some anti-histamine because it's still kind of bothersome. And either the cold weather or this is throwing my asthma into play so I need to take more albuterol. YAY DRUGS.

Thursday, January 08, 2009

A few days ago, my friends Nicole and Tim gave me a ride home from work, but they needed to stop at the store for some ingredients in the icebox cookies she was going to make. Since they wandered down the frozen foods aisle, I picked up a pizza thing for dinner. Then we spotted the Disney pizzas. One was shaped like Mickey Mouse. Tim convinced me to get it.

Until today I had never tried using our gas oven, afraid of pulling a Sylvia Plath. I put the pizza in it and was rewarded by seeing the blue flames at the bottom of the thing. (Google assured me this was normal, as I cannot describe it accurately). So I let the pizza cook for abut eight of the fifteen minutes as recommended by the box. At the eight minute mark, the smoke alarm goes off.

First instinct was to check the oven. Pizza was cooking along normally, nothing wrong. So I did my Standard Operating Procedure in these situations: Open up the kitchen door to the outside, and yell at the Alarm.

This time the technique failed, and it continued to go off. Still frightened by the powers of the gas oven, I turned it off. It did not help. So I turned off the kitchen light and tried to find the smoke alarm. Side note: I did not know where the alarm was, let alone that we had one til I set it off one night. I did not find the source of the noise until today. I stood up on a chair and surveyed the kitchen and finally found the goddamned thing on top of a shelf. I wrenched the battery out of it and it shut the fuck up.

I then ate my delicious delicious pizza and declared victory over the smoke detector. After I finished making dinner tonight I put the battery back in the smoke detector, but now I know thine enemy.

(I know Candice and Ash will appreciate this: when I was yelling at the smoke alarm, I thought of the infamous "SHUT UP, STOVE, THE OVEN'S ON FIRE!")

Tuesday, January 06, 2009

I'm still working on my Peace Corps application, but I have no idea how to find out how much / where my student loans are from. Any ideas? I know where two of them are but there is more money than those two.

Some of you may have heard that LJ is making some cutbacks. While I don't anticipate it shutting down anytime soon, I decided that I will also be crossposting entries not only to Facebook, but to my much neglected Blogspot. You're welcome to follow me on both. Or not.